About Sefton Park
by D Frederick
Summary: A walk in the park


About Sefton Park

A lovers' place of tryst in Victorian times, with a manifestation on St Valentine's Day

attached to a tragic story of legend, the Iron Bridge spans a water-course that lulls.

Looking down, and out into Constable beside the Fairy Glen, the scene broken only -

and then stealing you back - by the gentle passage from pools over rocks that joins the

pond-green truckle of the Jordan. A course that threads with gentle play, unheralded

at the Mersey shore.

Out from the railing-enclosed idyll of Fairy Glen, where to look back holds you fast

upon a fairy tale page, with the leavening-green wrought iron of the bridge curling at

the margins. The trees a canopy holed by sunlight glinting in showers below: the path

beside the still, winding brook. Along the causeway between bloom and bush and

high-nettled tangles and twists, the still winding brook slows your step. Past

riverbank tailed-runners that are going no place in a rush and dry basking terrapins

doing much the same.

Skittish squirrels that can't see in front of their noses take peanuts from your fingers,

wide-eyed. Alert to bigger birds, blue tits flit to your out-stretched palm and perch

momentarily for their pick. A pair of jays that are not such a rare sight this year, wary

of their bullying magpie cousins, flash blue and pink in the trees; they have a taste for

peanuts too. As do all the birds that can be seen only when tempted down from the

blinking green arbour. So too the pigeons. Rooks, mallards, doves, coots,

moorhens and geese. Surrendering to the splendour and 'life in harmony' of our local

civic pride, it was for two north Liverpool friends of mine their first ever visit to

Sefton Park.

In a statue-slow march passing us on one side of the brook, and broadly stretching a

way around the park's two hundred acres, a cover of high-limbed tall Birch and Elm.

Not much good for climbing unaided but with clearance between each for a clear run

at the game of chase. Dogs unleashed and pin-balling can ever and only get close to

these wizards of the trees. Chasing a ball of plume-tail and fur that runs up

trees…will always have him returning slack-jawed to his master.

Past gnarled fingers of trees along pathways in bloom suffusing sunlight with coos

and caws, cackle and song. This year's a different thing.

With the park being re-sculpted, invigorated and renewed, not much in the shape and

colour of new life was to be seen last year. With the flora trimmed back, the fauna

fell off too. Looking lost in transition and a little sorry for itself, the essential work on

the park withered the lake and its life. A pair of swans that nurtured young on the

lake's island for some, or all, of the previous six or seven seasons, found a new albeit

temporary home.

Since the departure from the lake of all other wintering birds - swans, geese, tufted

ducks and more, including the interloping gulls that performed mid-air feats for a

mid-air snack - those same swans nested again on the lake's island. Hatching six

blue-blooded, very cosseted cygnets.

After negotiating the stepping stones and passing by the swans island, the 'gorgeous'

sweep of the lake comes into view for my friends. A little further along and we're

soon looking out at something resembling a cartoon DONALD, with its bill rising from

the water, orange\yellow like its upturned, flippered feet. There was nothing

animated about this poor Pekin duck; its identical white mate close by, worrying

itself in circles '…_its neck was snapped in the jaws of a dog',___said a seated lady

forlornly; with discarded rolled up bits of bread at her feet.

What once amused as I strolled nonchalantly beside the lake now held me

nonplussed. There was nothing much a dog owner could do, I suppose, once their

unleashed best friend was set upon the water. And to witness the

commotion a paddling and panting dog caused amongst the birds, especially the

peeved irritation of the mallards, was often not half as entertaining as the efforts of

their owners in trying to rescue not just the situation but their own composure.

And now I realise why playtime for some can be just a little too rough for others –

both duck and 'dog-handler'. What their flustered and shame-faced manner often

betrayed at such times was not the in-control, responsible dog-owning citizen of near

genteel respectability, ha! Well, serves them right! Just keep it tethered around the

birds.

The lake's mere few feet of depth was exposed last year when work in the park saw

the water source largely dry up. And from where once as a child a boat may be hired,

that could send you to an unfathomable watery grave should a leak spring or a

shark capsize it, now there's a new-built coffee-shop kiosk, with seating closer

to the lakeside.

Carved-out like a miniature Scottish loch, and bounded and fringed by

sturdy and high blown tree-green, the lake is perfectly set off and inviting from above.

Unless, of course, you're up there with wings which aren't your own.

Walking an arc lakeside around its southernmost and widest part, the mallards and

coots - and a singular white Pekin - squat or perch as nonchalant as would once the

licensed anglers. Who will once again, I expect, when the restocking serves up a

sizeable catch.

So what the heron is doing here again I can only but guess, visible as he is most

mornings. If our heron is not eating tiddlers, as one of my friends suggests, then

could it be that some enthusiast has stocked the lake from another source with god-

knows what size of fish? Or has the Sefton Park heron had a belly full elsewhere and

is enjoying some quality time lakeside while human traffic is off-peak? With the

morning clerical coot lined up one-legged around the rim of the lake, without sermon

and a flock unto themselves, still, majesty belongs with the heron. I tilt my hat to

both.

Early morning when people traffic is slow the family of swans have been seen to

waddle their way up and past the stepping stones - from where the lake's second

source runs around - to a smaller more secluded body of water. So when they've

gone missing that's where they've been. A narrowing source traceable west

through the parkland where tented and outdoor events are held. At each end of the

gentle-wooded eyot (upon which we are planning to build our summerhouse) are two

fountain geysers, original features of the Victorian park.

Stubborn, true and to the manner born, besides an intermittent spouting of monsoon

shower a coot builds its island manor. The sight of which loosens from myself a

primal urge to go live in a tree-house. For a time. True-to-itself and heedless of

others the white-billed, ball-like black water-fowl makes itself at home when putting

its foot up. Upon one leg it becomes cartoon.

The morning amblers, dog-walkers and on-the-hoof creature comforters are the park's

human crucible. Drawn from diversity they coalesce. What does become urban folk

when we escape and sheave into our microcosm of countryside?

The civilising influence of being at one again with nature seems paradoxical. Such

easy courtesies as a nod or a 'morning!' would be curious - lost in

the bustle and anonymity of life - outside of the park. (A latent desire to escape back

into the countryside from our urban working life is perhaps apparent in the traditional

style of our pubs, no less?)

The transcendent nature of our own true existence is weighed down and rooted in a

shallow material world. Yet with little resistance to the winds of fashion. Where

reality is fixed and outlook grounded to the flat horizon. And yet small irony that

those who are at one with, and rooted deep into their earth, more readily transcend

their reality. And for the nature-loving human park life, perspective is everything.

Sharing the morning park and the time of day, a certain gentleman with his white

Patterdale\Jack Russell cross (fit as the proverbial from a once a day meal-time) is

just one familiar and friendly face. Known to all, with a ball for the dog and carrier

bags for dirt. Essential to the morning constitution of this stalwart and his friend

include some gentle miles about the park.

A slow amble around the lake for the master of the Yorkshire terrier - as big as a mop

head that just skims the ground. Brazen and fearless with a too-human face; too big

for its bones a yap, that starts.

While at leisure and free to play with your thoughts, the great expansive park solitude

longingly pesters and pulls at your elbows, guiding you back. Did we all have a place

in our childhood that nostalgia called-home!? Or that just recalled our easiest and

happiest time!? Salad days and oyster years…

Feelings conjured from fragmented images that just a scent captures. Scenes playing

in time-lapse but held fast in a spell that transports us through branches and leaves,

whistles and cries; the love that is yours - preserving innocence - back and forth

through all of your years? Schooldays. (Glan Alyn Boarding School-days were mine.

My place; my time if I but knew it then. Six years in Wales that went out like a

flame, re-lit and dancing on days as these.)

Summer colours plucked from Rho bushes, gathered in a bunch for mummy.

Her little brother stays blossoming pink, relieved as the verdure hides his blushes.

The young toes twinkle and scamper across the stretches of wooded grassland; the

enclosed and busy playground invites – but not without mummy! Golf-green lawns

between high hedges and orchards…. With the longed for summer holidays that took

forever to arrive and will go on and on until…the kids are bigger.

Beside a willow tree dripping at the waterside, and with morning sun rising behind, a

rainbow arches and shimmers in the spray of the fountain. Between these two water

features is another: more basking terrapins. Beneath the original island bandstand

brought back to life, a lone swan conducts herself while looking loosely knotted.

Towards the refurbished and extended Aviary Café, whereupon the fountain and

statue that is Sefton Park's Eros. Cast from the world famous original in Piccadilly

Circus, winged and almost naked in aluminium and bronze. Lovingly, painstakingly

restored inch by inch.

From here where divergent parkways meet, who that have flowed through the park

will soon ebb away, directly or in their stride.

The winding, wooded path leading back to Fairy Glen courts privacy for easy-talking

friends and sweethearts. Caught by early evening chatter from branches belonging

not to the flighty, but a flock of young adults. Perched and hidden upon the

accommodating bean-cushion boughs of a tree more suited to Brobdingnag, and

standing opposite, yet belonging inside, the Palm House.

An imposing, three tiered dome of glass housing exotic plants and greenery; with

statues of the celebrated and revered standing guard around the gravel setting of the

house. The Palm House is not just symbolic to the park but emblematic of the civic

grandeur, style and confidence, not to mention philanthropy, of Victorian England's

urban centres: Liverpool. And her own Sefton Park.

Back at their waiting mother's car beside the Iron Bridge, my companions agree how

happy they are to have spent the first day of their school holidays with their new

friend. And when can they again visit Sefton Park.

By D. Frederick


End file.
